We’d love to make it easy for you to get up and running with Facebook Ads. These are the exact steps and lessons we’ve been taking to build up our own paid ads campaigns, and we’ll be keeping this post up-to-date with the latest news and learnings.

Got any ideas on how to make this post better? We’d love your comments! Drop us a line here and we’ll review and update the post (and give you a shoutout!).

How to navigate this guide

There’s a lot to learn with Facebook Ads! And I know I’m going to leave a lot out. This article is our best shot at covering all the important aspects of Facebook advertising for someone who is just starting out. To make it easier to digest, we’ve broken this guide down into four chapters. Here’s where to find any info you might need:

Chapter 1:An Introduction to Facebook Ads: a high-level look at the factors businesses and brands consider when choosing Facebook ads and some quick tips on getting started with ads.

Chapter 2:How to guides: Information and screenshots on where to find everything and how to get set up with the various types of Facebook ads.

Chapter 3:How to choose an audience for your ads: Audience targeting is where Facebook advertising can become truly powerful and significant. Here we show you how to find the right audience for your ads.

Chapter 1:
An Introduction to Facebook Ads

All the basics you need to get up and running with Facebook Ads.

First things first: Why use Facebook ads?

Facebook Advertising is now one of the most effective tools out there to grow your business, create loyal customers, and generate leads and sales. There are now over 3 million businesses advertising on Facebook and there’s never been a better time to start than now.

Here are just a few reasons why Facebook Advertising is hugely exciting for marketers:

Pros

Instant return on investment (You can easily define a cost per conversion and understand what your profit is)

More targeting options, including, towns, regions, age, likes/interests, income bracket, and other demographics

Easier to set up than Google AdWords

The ability to reach people early on in the buying process, before they are aware of their need, while capturing those who are aware of the need in a subtle way

You can use images and videos to capture the interest of your target market, helping you to sell your products and services

CPC is relatively cheap, depending on your industry (On average, no more than $0.61 per click)

Cons

If set up and managed incorrectly, it can be costly, but less so than Google AdWords

Depending on your target market, the majority of the large potential audience can be irrelevant (For instance, we would not recommend Facebook Advertising if someone only served or supplied their products and services to one town)

There is no option to target your ads at certain times within the day or on certain days of the week unless you choose a lifetime budget

Most suitable for those operating in B2C markets

Reaching people too early in the buying cycle could potentially reduce your goal conversion rate

Getting started

To get to your Facebook Ads dashboard, you can head to https://www.facebook.com/ads/manager or click the dropdown arrow in the upper-right corner of Facebook and choose “Manage Ads” from the drop-down.

Finding your way around the dashboard

From the ads dashboard, you’re able to manage every aspect of your Facebook ads experience. There’s a lot here! This is where to find all the essential tools, menus, and buttons.

We’ll get into each of these options in the article sections below. Feel free to use CTRL+F or CMD+F to find any exact phrase you need.

Chapter 2:
The 11 different types of Facebook Ad

(And How To Set Up Each One)

Facebook Ads are extremely versatile and there are now 11 different variations you can use to solve a whole host of business problems from driving traffic to your website to reaching people in your local area.

Below is a list of the various Ads available to Facebook advertisers and throughout this chapter, we’ll walk you through each type individually.

Boost your posts

Promote your Page

Send people to your website

Increase conversions on your website

Get installs of your app

Increase engagement in your app

Reach people near your business

Raise attendance at your event

Get people to claim your offer

Get video views

Collect leads for your business

How to choose your ad type

When you go to create a new Facebook ad (by clicking the green button on your ads dashboard), you’ll get to choose among these 11 different options, all of which with a unique focus for growing your business or your page.

The general setup for each will be similar: You’ll go from choosing the type of ad (the objective), to choosing the audience and the budget (the ad set), to making the ad itself (the ad).

Here’s a quick run down of each of the 11.

1. Boost your posts

What’s involved:

After you click to create a new ad and choose “Boost your posts,” the next steps are:

Choose one of your Facebook Pages or enter its URL

Select a previous update that you’ve published to your page (or create a new update)

Give this campaign a name

At the next step, you can set your audience and budget. (Jump to the section in this post about audience and budget.)

After setting audience and budget, you can move ahead into the ad creative. The good news with boosted post campaigns: The ad creative is already set for you! The creative is the post!

From this screen, you can change the post you’d like to boost, and (here’s the most hands-on part of this step) you can view how your boosted posts will look in three different locations within Facebook:

Desktop News Feed

Mobile News Feed

Desktop right column

Within the Ad Preview, you can click to view each location:

And from here, you can also set which locations you’d like your ad to appear. For any spots you’d rather not show your ad, click the Remove link to the right of the preview.

Tip: You can also boost posts directly from your Facebook Page or Newsfeed. To do this simply click on the Boost post button displayed on any of your posts.

2. Promote your page

What’s involved:

After you click to create a new ad and choose “Promote your Page,” the next steps are:

Choose one of your Facebook Pages or enter its URL

Give this campaign a name

At the next step, you can set your audience and budget. (Jump to the section in this post about audience and budget.)

After setting audience and budget, you get to set the creative elements of the ad: photo, text, and more. First off, you’ll be asked to select an image to use; you can choose to upload your own, select from a collection of searchable stock photos from Shutterstock, or pick from a library of images you’ve used on previous ads.

To easily create variations of your ad and test how different images perform, you can create up to 6 ads at once by uploading multiple images from this one screen.

For choosing images, Facebook offers these guidelines:

1,200 x 444 pixels (width and height)

Image ratio: 8:3 (basically, if you divide the width of your image by 8 and the height by 3, the result should be the same)

Your image may not include more than 20% text.

This last guideline is an interesting one! It’s in place for a very good reason: Facebook is mindful of the aesthetic of having ads appear on its network and wants to ensure the highest quality and best experience possible for its users.

Facebook offers a tool to check the 20% text rule and see if your image meets the guideline. Visit the tool and upload your image. Facebook adds a grid overlay to the image, and you can click any box that includes text. If the boxes you’ve selected make up less than 20% of the image, you’re good to go!

Additionally, you can upload a series of three to seven photos that Facebook will stitch together as a slideshow video. You can select the shape of the slideshow (square or rectangle), the length that the image stays visible, and the transition (none or fade) from one image to the next.

And if you have a video that you’d prefer to use for the page promotion, you can add it here also.

After selecting an image, slideshow, or video, you can customize the text that appears as the update above the ad. Click in the “Text” box to edit. You have an upper limit of 90 characters to use.

From the right-hand panel of the Ad Editor, you can preview your ad and select which locations you want it to appear. By default, Facebook will show the ad on the desktop News Feed, mobile News Feed, and the desktop right column. Click to remove any of these options.

Under “Show Advanced Options,” there are three additional places to customize.

1. Add a headline (this only appears in the desktop right column).

2. Choose where the visitor ends up should they click through to your page. By default, people will arrive at your Timeline. You can also select any other page that you have linked to from your Facebook Page menu, like Video, Photos, Events, or custom pages.

3. You can also track conversions. Conversion tracking with Facebook involves the installation of a conversion pixel, which I’ll cover in a section below. Hop there now if you’re curious.

3. Send people to your website

What’s involved:

After you click to create a new ad and choose “Send people to your website,” the next steps are:

(Optional) Choose a conversion pixel to further track the performance of the ad (more on pixels here)

Give this campaign a name

At the next step, you can set your audience and budget. (Jump to the section in this post about audience and budget.)

After setting audience and budget, you get to build the creative. The first customization option for website traffic ads is choosing if you’d like to show a single image or video in the ad or show multiple images in the ad (up to five).

For choosing a single image or video, you’ll see the same image options that you had for the “Promote your Page” ad: single image, slideshow, or video.

For the multiple image option, you get to build a carousel of pictures, each with their own headlines and descriptions.

With multiple images, you’ll have the choice to customize four different aspects of the carousel images:

Image: Upload a new image or choose one from your library. You can crop the image from within the editor so you get just the right parts showing.

Headline

Description (optional)

Call to Action: Changes to the call-to-action are reflected on all your carousel slides. You can choose among Apply Now, Book Now, Contact Us, Donate Now, Download, Learn More, Shop Now, Sign Up, Watch More, or no button.

(Bonus: You can change the destination URL for each image also, if for instance you might have special landing pages for each unique feature that you’re pitching.)

Additionally, for the multiple image option, you can choose to have Facebook show the best-performing image first (the one that the most people are clicking on), and at the end of your carousel, you can opt for Facebook to add an additional slide with your Page’s profile picture and a call-to-action to “See more at [your website].”

Similar to the previous ad types, with the “Send people to your website” ad, you can choose to show it in the News Feed on desktop and/or mobile and in the right column on desktop. Additionally, you can choose a couple more options:

Each option comes with previews within the ads editor so you can see your ads in action.

Tip: When you’re driving traffic from a specific Facebook ad to you website, think carefully about the landing page that traffic will be hitting. Does the page feel aligned with the copy of your ad? Are there clear CTAs? Do the ad and the page feel related?

4. Increase conversions on your website

What’s involved:

After you click to create a new ad and choose “Increase conversions,” the next steps are:

Enter the URL that you’d like to promote

Important: Choose a conversion pixel to track the conversions of the ad (more on pixels here)

Give this campaign a name

At the next step, you can set your audience and budget. (Jump to the section in this post about audience and budget.)

After setting audience and budget, you can build the creative for your ad. This works the same way as it does for the “Send people to my website” ad type, mentioned above. You can choose among a single image, a single video, or multiple images. All the same options are present here:

Connect a Facebook page

Write a headline that appears under your chosen images/video

Add description text to go above the images/video

Choose a call-to-action

Choose where you’d like the ad to appear: In the News Feed (desktop and/or mobile), on Facebook’s Ad Network, on Instagram, and in the Right Column (desktop only)

5. Get installs of your app

What’s involved:

After you click to create a new ad and choose “Get installs,” the next steps are:

Choose an app, either by typing in the name of your app or by pasting a URL from the iOS App Store or the Google Play Store. ( You can advertise any app that you’ve registered on Facebook’s developer site.)

Give this campaign a name

At the next step, you can set your audience and budget. (Jump to the section in this post about audience and budget.)

After setting audience and budget, you can build the creative for you ad. Like other ads, here you’ll have the choice between a single image/video or multiple images. Other customization options will be familiar, too: Headline, text, Facebook page, etc.

For this ad type in particular, there are just a handful of differences.

2. Deep links: You can link directly to a particular screen or state within your app. For instance, if you have a URL that points to a specific product page or account page within the app, you can link directly there.

3. Call to Action buttons: There are a few additional, specific app CTAs that you can choose from. Here’s the full list:

6. Increase engagement in your app

After you click to create a new ad and choose “Increase engagement,” the next steps are:

Choose an app, either by typing in the name of your app or by pasting a URL from the iOS App Store or the Google Play Store.

Give this campaign a name

At the next step, you can set your audience and budget. (Jump to the section in this post about audience and budget.)

After setting audience and budget, you can build the ad’s creative elements. For the “Increase app engagement” ad type, the settings here are the exact same as they are for the “Get app installs” ad type. The main difference between the two is in the destination and goal for each. For app installs, you’ll typically be interested in gaining more point-of-entry signups, linking to the installation page for your app.

With the “Increase app engagement” ad type, you’ll likely be interested in Facebook’s Deep Links settings, where you can link to specific places within the app and drive more engagement there. For instance, at Buffer, we might advertise to current app users and include a link for them to view the posts in their queue (and link directly there).

7. Reach people near your business

What’s involved:

After you click to create a new ad and choose “Reach people near you,” the next steps are:

Choose one of your Facebook Pages or enter its URL

Give this campaign a name

At the next step, you can set your audience and budget. Unlike all other Facebook ad types here, the Audience settings for “Reach people near you” will ask you to choose an area from a map and then target the ad toward people in those areas.

By default, the map will center on your business’s street address. You can enter any address you’d like in the text box below the map and set the Radius to any of 8 defaults (from 1 mile to 50 miles) or a custom mile radius.

Once the map is in place, you can also click to move the target area to a different point in the map.

After setting audience and budget, you can create the ad itself. These localization ads have four different opportunities to gain engagement for your business:

Like Page

Call Now

Learn More

Send Message

For the “Like Page” option, the ad will be geared toward driving Page likes. You can change the images, the main text, the headline, and the link description for this ad.

For “Call Now”, you can make the same changes as with the “Like Page” campaign, plus you can also include your phone number.

For “Learn More,” when people click the Learn More button, they’ll be taken to any URL you choose. All the same customization options appear here (images, text, headlines) plus an additional box for the URL of your choosing.

For “Send Message,” when people click the Send Message button, they’ll have the chance to send you a message through your Facebook page.

8. Raise attendance at your event

What’s involved:

After you click to create a new ad and choose “Raise attendance,” the next steps are:

Choose one of your Facebook events or enter a Facebook event URL

Give this campaign a name

At the next step, you can set your audience and budget. The ad’s audience will default to a segment near the location of your event.

After setting audience and budget, you can create the ad itself. Facebook will grab the main image for the event automatically and suggest it as an image to use in the ad. Like other ad types, you can create up to six ads to test by uploading multiple images. There’s always just the one image per ad.

Most of the rest of the ad is taken care of for you. Facebook automatically includes the date, the time, the event’s title, the location, and the number of people interested and attending. The call-to-action button on the desktop News Feed is “Interested.”

You can see an ad preview above for the specific layout of these elements.

Things vary slightly for mobile …

… and for the desktop right column.

For additional customization, you can change the text that appears as the update above the ad. You can also ad custom URL tags and conversion pixel tracking.

Tip: As with all types of Facebook Ads, a great image is key for event promotion ads. Try to ensure your image gives insight into the type of event you’re promoting. (Like the bubbles in the Bubble Run event, above.)

9. Get people to claim your offer

What’s involved:

After you click to create a new ad and choose “Get people to claim your offer,” the next steps are:

Choose one of the offers you’ve published to your Facebook Page or create a new offer

Give this campaign a name

For creating an offer, you can do this directly from the ad editor itself, or you can create offers from your Facebook Page directly. If you’re on your Facebook Page, click on the “Offer” link just above the text editor:

For the offer, you can call it out directly in the headline and text, then link to a landing page or include a promo code. In addition, you can set the dates of the offer as well as a limit to the number of people who take advantage.

Once you’ve created/chosen an offer to boost, you can set your audience and budget. (Jump to the section in this post about audience and budget.)

After setting audience and budget, you can preview how the ad will look in the desktop/mobile News Feed and the desktop right column. There aren’t really any customization options here, other than adding URL tags and conversion pixels. Much like a boosted post, this one will go out looking near identical to the original offer post.

10. Get video views

What’s involved:

After you click to create a new ad and choose “Get video views,” the next steps are:

Choose one of your Facebook Pages or enter its URL

Give this campaign a name

At the next step, you can set your audience and budget. (Jump to the section in this post about audience and budget.)

After setting audience and budget, you can create the ad. First, you’ll want to upload a video to share. You can also pull from a post on your page that has included a video. When uploading a video, Facebook recommends the following:

.mov or .mp4 file format

At least 720p resolution

Widescreen (16:9 aspect ratio) is recommended

60 minutes and/or 2.3 GB max for Facebook

60 seconds and/or 2.3 GB max for Instagram

Alternately, you can use a series of 3 to 7 images as a slideshow, which will autoplay as a video in the News Feed.

After the video’s been selected, you can edit the way the ad appears by customizing the text and buttons. By default, Facebook does not show a button, allowing the ad to focus on purely gaining more video views. You can edit the text that appears above the video.

If you’d like to include a button with the ad, there are seven choices from the “Call to Action” dropdown:

No button (default)

Book Now

Download

Learn More

Shop Now

Sign Up

Watch More

For each of these button options, you can customize four additional text fields: the website URL, the display URL, the headline, and the link description.

Tip: Video is huge on Facebook right now! It’s likely to be successful at all times of day (we’ve seen high video views at all hours). To maximize your views and your money, test out various times to see when your video content best resonates with the Facebook audience.

11. Collect leads for your business

What’s involved:

After you click to create a new ad and choose “Boost your posts,” the next steps are:

Choose one of your Facebook Pages or enter its URL

Give this campaign a name

At the next step, you can set your audience and budget. (Jump to the section in this post about audience and budget.)

After setting audience and budget, you’ll go to the ad creative. Building the ad will be the same as it is for most other campaigns. You can customize the image and the text that appears in all places on the ad.

Where the Facebook lead ad distinguishes itself is with its Lead Form. In the ad itself, there are options for six different buttons:

Apply Now

Download

Get Quote

Learn More

Sign Up

Subscribe

Each of these buttons will link to a form that you can create within the Facebook ad editor.

Below the customization section is the Lead Form section, and in here you can choose to attach an existing Lead Form that you’ve previously created or create a new one.

Here are the steps to create a new Facebook Lead Form:

1. Give the form a name and choose the primary language.

2. Select which information you’d like to receive.

By default, Facebook will suggest the email and full name of the person. You can click below these two options to expand the listing to include 19 more options (admittedly, some of them more useful than others).

First name

Last name

Phone number

Street address

City

State

Province

Country

Post code

Zip code

Date of birth

Gender

Marital status

Relationship status

Company name

Military status

Job title

Work phone number

Work email

You can also ask three custom questions in addition to the options above. Facebook suggests particular info you might wish for here, or you can type a fully custom question of your own choosing. The preset suggestions include things like buyer intent (“When do you plan to make a purchase?”) to car details (“Choose a car model.”). The open-ended question can be whatever you’d like.

You can customize the answers for each question, or leave it open-ended as well.

After settling on your questions and information, you’ll then be asked for a link to the privacy policy of your website and any legal disclaimers.

And (final step) you can include a link to your website for people to visit upon completing the Lead Form.

Optional: Context Cards

Additionally, before someone fills out a Lead Form, you can show a Context Card, which adds a bit more detail about the offer or next steps. With this card, you can edit:

The headline

The benefit text (either a paragraph or bullet list)

The button text

The context card works great for explaining the benefits of what you’re offering!

After settling on all these details, you’ll get a chance to preview the flow of your form and then confirm and save. You can now use this form from any Lead Ad you create moving forward.

Tip: Lead Ads are slightly different from other types of Facebook Ads. One top tip is to focus on the value behind your chosen button. For example, why should someone join your email list? Write your copy and choose your images to match the answer.

Chapter 3:
How to choose an audience for your Facebook ad

In each ad set, you’ll have the chance to target a specific audience with your ad, and this is where Facebook advertising can become truly powerful and significant. There is lots to understand about how these audience segments work, and there’re plenty of strategies to try, too. Here’s a quick overview of how and what to do with choosing a Facebook ad audience.

Finding your way around the audience settings

The audience settings tab will be the second screen you see after choosing your Facebook ad type. And there’s a lot to see here! This is a quick overview of the Facebook ads audience settings:

1 – Create a custom audience (more here)

2 – Geographic targeting

3 – Age, gender, language targeting

4 – Target by interest or behavior

5 – Target based on how someone’s connected (or not connected) to your page

6 – Audience selection scale

7 – Audience selection overview

About targeting

As you can tell from the layout of the audience settings, the majority of options here have to do with audience targeting. You get to choose precisely who sees your ad, based on hundreds (even thousands) of different factors. Like:

Location

Age

Gender

Language

Interests

Behaviors

Connections

Here’s a bit more about each:

Location

Location segmentation allows you to include or exclude people who will see your ad, based on where they are in the world. Like most Facebook ad settings, the location info is quite robust.

Start by choosinghow you want to define that a person is in a particular area:

Target “Everyone in this location” to reach everyone whose home or most recent location is in the area

Target “People who live in this location” to reach everyone whose home is in the area

Target “People recently in this location” to reach people whose most recent location is in the area

Target “People traveling in this location” to reach people whose most recent location is in the area but whose home is at least 125 miles away

Then you can add an exact location by typing in the name of a country, state, region, city, postal code, address — even a Nielsen TV region or congressional district.

Once you’ve entered a location, you can fine tune the radius that you’ll use to target. By clicking the “+25mi” text next to the city name, you’ll get a drop-down that allows you to pick just how wide you’d like to target: everything from just the exact city itself to 10 miles up to 50 miles.

You can add as many locations as you’d like by repeating the steps above. Also, if you have a big list of locations to add, you can do it in bulk by pasting in from a spreadsheet or text file.

Age, Gender, and Language

These are likely to be pretty self-explanatory. For age, you can choose a minimum and maximum age, and the ad will be served only to those who fall within the range. Same goes for gender, where the options are “All” (default), “Men,” or “Women.”

For language, you can leave this one blank unless the audience you’re targeting speaks a different language than what you’d typically find in the locations you’ve chosen.

Like with other ad settings, you have the choice with these options to either include or exclude based on factors of demographics, interests, and behaviors. The default option here is to include anyone who matches any of the segments. To further narrow the audience, you can add a segment that all potential audience members need to meet.

Connections

Last, you can choose to segment based on how a person has (or hasn’t) interacted with your Facebook page, app, or event before. This can be a necessary segmentation feature, particularly if you’re trying to track down an audience that might not be familiar with you, or to followup with an audience that already has context with what you do.

About custom audiences

This is really neat stuff: A custom audience is a group of people who have a previous relationship with you, perhaps as customers or contacts. You can build an audience of just these particular people and serve your ads directly to them.

To get started, click the “Create new custom audience” link at the top of the audience settings page. Your previously created custom audiences appear just above, and you can select those for future campaigns.

A popup will appear with three different ways to create your audience: Customer List, Website Traffic, or App Activity.

With the Customer List, you can upload or copy/paste a data file of email addresses, phone numbers, or Facebook user IDs.

With the Website Traffic, Facebook can create an audience based on the conversion pixel you’ve installed on your site. Here, you have the options to choose a timeframe for the traffic as well as segment by:

Anyone who visits your site

People who have seen particular pages

People who have seen particular pages but not other pages

People who haven’t visited for awhile

With the App Activity, you select one of your connected Facebook apps and segment based on activity within the app.

Custom audiences help to further refine the pool from which you can segment. For instance, once you select or create a custom audience, you can then go ahead and continue to filter that audience based on location, demographics, interests, and behaviors.

Once you’ve created an audience, you can save it for quick use next time. Check the box at the bottom of the audience settings to name and save this particular audience. The next time you create an ad, you can choose an existing audience at the top of the settings.

Chapter 4:
Budgeting, Analysis, and Successful Strategies

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How to set a budget for your Facebook ad

In the budget settings for your Facebook ad, you’ll get to control a couple of important elements: How much you want to spend and when you want to start spending it. There are further, specific customization options at this stage, too, for those eager to have even more control over the specifics of delivery.

Choosing a budget

By default, Facebook starts out suggesting a $20.00 daily budget. You can adjust this however you want, choosing either “daily” or “lifetime” budget and also editing the amount you’re wanting to spend.

With the daily budget, the amount you set is the maximum you will spend on any given day.

With the lifetime budget, the amount you set is the maximum you will spend on the lifetime of your ad.

When you choose a lifetime budget, you will also need to set a start and end date for your ad. The option to run the ad continuously is no longer available.

Choosing a schedule

For daily and lifetime ads, you can tell Facebook when specifically you’d like the ad to run. By default, if you are running a daily ads budget, Facebook suggests to run the ad continuously. Otherwise, you can choose to start and end the ad on a specific day. (Facebook runs the math here for you and tells you the maximum amount, total, you will spend.)

>> Ad Sets – A collection of ads that support the main campaign (e.g., “Week 3 ads”)

>>> Ads – The specific ads that you’re running, with media and text and all that

In theory, you might have 1 campaign with 5 different ad sets and 10 different ads in each ad set. Numbers get bigger the more levels you go down.

To see an overview of stats from any of these categories, you can quickly toggle back and forth from your main ads dashboard (http://facebook.com/ads/manage)

You can click on any individual campaign, ad set, or ad to see just the stats for that particular look. To see multiple ones at once, click the checkbox next to each and then select View.

All data can be sorted by clicking on the heading for each column, and the data can be exported by clicking the Export button in the top right corner above the data table.

The stats for each have a robust set of data based on performance, delivery, cost, relevance, and more. You can toggle between these different looks by clicking through to campaigns, ad sets, and ads or by switching the view from the drop-down boxes above the right-side of the stats table.

For campaigns, by default, you see these stats:

Delivery – “Is the ad running now or not?”

Results – “How many actions has this campaign received?” i.e., clicks, installs, likes, and more. Facebook tells you which specific actions are assigned to the campaign.

Reach – “How many people saw my campaign?”

Cost – “How much did I pay, on average, for each action?”

Amount spent – “How much have I spent so far on this campaign?”

End date – “When does this campaign end?”

For ad sets, by default, you see these stats:

Delivery – “Are these ads running? How many?”

Reach – “How many people have seen ads from this set?”

Cost – “How much did I pay, on average, for each action?”

Budget – “What’s the maximum I’m going to pay on this ad set? Daily or lifetime?”

Amount Spent – “How much have I spent so far?”

Schedule – “How long will this ad set be running?”

For ads, by default, you see these stats (in addition to a thumbnail and text preview of what the ad looks like):

Delivery – “Is this ad running?”

Results – “How many actions has this ad received?”

Reach – “How many people have seen this ad?”

Cost – “How much am I paying, on average, for each action?” (Might also be known as, cost per click)

Amount spent – “How much have I spent total so far on this ad?”

Relevance score – A rating of 1 to 10 for how well the audience is responding to the ad

Tip: You can save any report to view later on, and you can set up a scheduled email with reports data to be sent straight to your inbox. To do so, in the top-left corner of the page, next to the title of the view, click the drop-down box to Save and Schedule.

To drill down even further, you can click on each individual ad to see charts and stats specific to that ad.

Conversion tracking and pixels

Facebook has a unique system for tracking actions that occur after someone leaves a Facebook ad and travels to a web page. You can install a Facebook pixel that tracks things like page views, registration, and orders.

To get your Facebook pixel, go to the menu at the top of the page, and select “Pixels” under the “Assets” menu.

From the pixel page, click Create a Pixel. Then click View Pixel Code.

The pixel code goes into the code of your page, in the <head> section. You can copy and paste the code from Facebook into your page, and for further tracking, you can add any number of variables to your code from Facebook’s many options.

View Content

Search

Add to Cart

Add to Wishlist

Initiate Checkout

Add Payment Info

Purchase

Lead

Complete Registration

For example, if you were to add extra conversion tracking for Leads to your Facebook code, you might take the original code from Facebook and add in the extra snippet for Leads to the page where your lead capture takes place.

Facebook Ads Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to have a Facebook page to run an ad?

Yes, you can create an ad for a website without a Facebook Page. However, you can only do this with ads that generate clicks for a website. Here’s how it works:

Go to ad creation and then select Clicks to Website

Enter the URL of the website you want to create an ad for and then click Continue

Fill in the details of your ad and then click Place Order

Are ads for pages or profiles?

Personal profiles are for non-commercial use and represent individual people.

What is a lookalike audience?

A lookalike audience is a collection of Facebook users who are similar to your Facebook fans, website visitors, or customers.

You can create a lookalike audience from the Audiences section of Facebook Ads (from the menu, it’s under Assets > Audience). Click to “Create Audience,” and choose “Lookalike audience” from the list.

Setting up the audience, you start by selecting a source for Facebook to compare with. This can be an existing custom audience, traffic from a tracking pixel, or the fans from a Page.

Lookalike audiences work for one country at a time, so after selecting a main source, you’ll next select the country to choose among.

And finally, the last step is to set the size of the audience. You can drag the bar back-and-forth to select between 1% and 10% of the country’s residents for Facebook to analyze and compare.

What are dark posts?

Dark posts are normal-looking Facebook updates that are intentionally never shared organically and only served as ads. You can create dark posts through the Facebook Ads power editor.

What is the power editor?

The power editor is for those who may wish to create large amounts of ads at once and have specific control over how the ads are served. You can access the power editor through the Facebook Ads menu, under “Create & Manage.”

What is the audience network?

The Audience Network placement extends your ads’ reach by showing them to the same target audience on other mobile apps and mobile websites approved by Facebook.

5 Popular strategies and Facebook advertising tips

There’s a host of great information out there on Facebook advertising tips and best practices. Ad Espresso has a wonderful blog, the Facebook content on Moz is outstanding, everything Jon Loomer writes is incredible.

We’ve collected some of our favorite tips and tactics for Facebook ads here. We’d love to hear what’s worked for you, if you’re up for leaving us a comment!

4. Image tips

The most important part of your ad is the image. You can write the most brilliant copy in the world, but if your image doesn’t catch a user’s eye, you won’t get any clicks.

Don’t use low-quality images, generic stock photography, or any images that you don’t have the rights to use. Don’t steal anything from Google Images. Unless you’re a famous brand, don’t use your logo.

Images of people work best. Preferably their faces. Use close-ups of attractive faces that resemble your target audience.

Facebook ad images are small (100 x 72 pixels). Make sure to focus on a person’s face and crop it if necessary. Don’t use a blurry or dark picture.

Advanced tip: Use images of people facing to the right. Users will follow the subject’s line of sight and be more likely to read your ad text.

5. Segment more than you think you should (and don’t overlook mobile!)

I love this post from Kane about his learnings with Facebook Ads. It’s a great primer for beginners (with something to be learned for pros, too, I’d imagine).

Here are a couple of my favorite takeaways:

Make sure the creative imagery and copy is tightly targeted to your audience. Instead of targeting an audience of 2,000,000 people, find a way to break them into smaller, more specific groups, and show them customized copy and graphics that will appeal to them.

Kane mentions that you can even go so far as to select an audience of cyclists if you have a cyclist in your ad creative. Awesome!

And here’s a great tip on mobile vs. desktop:

Regardless of the age or demographics of the audience you’re targeting, don’t assume that they’re scanning through a laptop Facebook feed just because you’re on a laptop all day while editing ads.

The vast majority of Facebook users are on mobile apps, and many of your ad sets may never get a click from desktop users.

Final thoughts and your thoughts

Thanks so much for taking the time to look through this guide. As I’ve mentioned, there’s so much to know on Facebook – we’d love to help as much as we can if there are any questions or tips you’d like us to know. And if you spot anything that’s changed about Facebook Ads since we’ve published, we’d be grateful for the heads up. Things move fast!

What has your Facebook Ads strategy looked like?

What kind of results are you seeing?

It’d be really great to get your thoughts in the comments. Chat with you there!

Read more and learn more

These are some really great sites that have helped us learn a ton with social media ads and Facebook advertising in particular:

You send casual videos instead of text messages, and you have a series of BombBomb videos you deploy when new leads come in. You’re a video expert compared to most agents, but that doesn’t mean you should quit now! Here are three quick challenges that will keep you ahead of the curve.

This election season, Facebook Live is really taking off as candidates hit the campaign trail. Now agents can take advantage of the same technology to share “behind-the-scenes” live streams with their friends and clients.

Start by recording a livestream on Facebook. Here are some ideas for what to broadcast:

Offer a live “Market Report” based on whatever data (RPR, Market Snapshot, etc.) you are currently using. Stand outside a closing where you represented the seller and mention that you closed for 10% over the market average.

Invite people to your open house by:

Recording a snippet of the home’s exterior: “Check out this curb appeal! Come check out 123 Oak Lawn Blvd from 2-4pm today.”

Showing off the panoramic view from a deck or patio: “Look at the amazing view at my newest listing on 123 Oak Lawn Blvd! Located at the top of Oak Hill, you can see the entire city of Rock Creek from the balcony. Come check it out from 2pm – 4pm today.”

Showing off your local flare! Stream your thoughts on a local Chamber of Commerce meeting as you’re exiting the building.

Not ready to make it about you? Stream a song from a local “Concert in the park.”

Start in selfie cam mode, saying “This is what I love about living in Rock Creek! Tonight, there’s an orchestra playing in the park down the street from me. Check out how talented my neighbors are!” and then flip the cam to the concert in progress. Alternatively, just record the orchestra and add the above script as your caption.

How do you do it?

Open Facebook on your mobile device. If you’re using your Profile page, go to the top of your newsfeed where you would to update your status. Look for this “Go live” button and follow the prompts to get started.

On a business page, you’ll go to “Publish” and look for the same icon to begin following the prompts.

Challenge two: Record and edit a market update video broadcast

For this more advanced video tactic, you’ll want a screen-recording tool (like Camtasia) and you may need a better microphone than what your laptop came with (try the Blue Snowball). Fire up your favorite market update tools, whether it be RPR, your local association or MLS, or Market Snapshot. Navigate through some of the more useful data points (days on market, list to close price) onscreen as you narrate why they are important.

Try a few different cuts and shots, and use Camtasia to piece the footage together into a quick, informative video. Make it a goal to record this monthly, and promote it via your email list, Facebook and Twitter channels and more.

Challenge three: Start snapping!

Start by setting up your Snapchat profile using Katie Lance’s best practices. Once you’ve added friends, send a quick snap video to someone you know. Pick someone you feel comfortable with and send them a snap video of:

you enjoying your morning coffee: “Haven’t seen you in forever. Let’s have coffee soon!”

The most compelling CTA in marketing today may be the “play” button. Whether you’ve just completed our beginner challenge, or are naturally an intermediate video user, it’s time to test out some tools and apps that will bring your video game to the next level.

Don’t shoot from below! Test out your angles and find out what’s most flattering.

Look at the lens, not at yourself.

Make sure your light source is coming from behind the camera (or at the very least, not behind you)

Write a bullet-point outline and run through it 2x max before hitting record.

Or, simply think of recording a video like leaving a voicemail. You are just moving the phone from your ear to in front of you.

If any words or phrases trip you up, consider changing them out for more casual language. (Example: say “use” instead of “utilize”, etc.)

Challenge one: Download and use Hyperlapse

Hyperlapse is an app from Instagram, and most people know it for its mind-bending sped up videos. But you can also use Hyperlapse to stabilize your video, and you can set it to play at any speed (including regular speed).

Hi, I’m Joe Agent, a local real estate expert in Lincoln County. I live and work in the Bay Valley area. In fact, I moved here after college and quickly realized it was the ONLY place I wanted to raise a family — and I’ve spent the last 10 years helping other families achieve the same dream. I would love to get to know you, your family and your buying or selling needs. I’m always available at: [PHONE] or [EMAIL]. I look forward to hearing from you!

Once the video is recorded, feel free to send it as an email attachment or via text message. For a more robust email send, consider challenge #2: setting up a BombBomb free trial!

Challenge two: Test out BombBomb’s free trial

BombBomb is the best casual video tool out there for real estate agents. Once downloaded, you can create and store videos to use in specific responses (e.g. response to an online lead, response to someone wanting to know their home value, etc.).

Once set up, you can always access these videos from your phone through the BombBomb app. Once you’ve signed up for the 14-day free trial (no credit card needed!), try:

Uploading your Hyperlapse bio video to BombBomb

Record other videos, including:

CMA response. “Hi there. At your request, I just sent you an automated home value estimate based on local home prices in your neighborhood. But, it’s likely that your home’s condition — or any upgrades you’ve made to it — mean that your home could be worth even more than my initial estimate. I’d love to come visit your home in person and give you a personal, expert opinion on your property value. Call or text back if you’d like me to stop by this week.”

Online lead response, based on certain neighborhoods or areas: “Hi, I see you’re looking for a home in the Valleywood subdivision. I love that neighborhood, and I’ve helped 10 clients just this year find the right homes for their families in Valleywood. I’d be honored to help you, too. Call, email or text back if you’d like to talk further.”

The next time you have an opportunity to send a text or email to a new lead, try using your BombBomb videos instead!

52% of marketers worldwide name video as the content with the best ROI1, and by 2017, videos will become nearly 70% of consumer traffic2. And, Mark Zuckerberg said on 7/27/2016 after Facebook released its second-quarter earnings, “We’re going to become video first.”

But even as videos become more and more popular, many agents and marketers steer clear, assuming the barrier to enter is high.

That’s where this three-part video challenge for beginners comes in. Starting today, we’ll help you bust past your fears and reservations and confidently record and leverage your first video.

Don’t buy expensive equipment just yet! Anyone with a smartphone can record and send “good-enough” video.

Set your camera at or above eye level. Don’t record from below!

Using a smartphone? Look directly into the camera lens, not at yourself

Make sure the light is coming from behind the camera (or at least, not from behind you). Window light is often better than overhead lighting.

You don’t need a full script! Write a few bullets and practice or memorize the flow so you sound confident and natural.

Challenge one: Send a quick video

Let’s do this! First, let’s get into the habit of using videos rather than text. To begin, start by either:

Starting a thread by sending a video instead of a text

Replying to a text with a video

The idea is to take 9 seconds to show someone you care by taking this step vs. the 2-3 seconds it takes to respond to a text with text. Just try it with your family or a couple friends! Then try it with a prospect or two. If you are a broker, try sending a new recruit a video vs. a text.

No, it’s not just for teenagers and college students! Snapchat is the fastest growing social media channel and you can’t afford to ignore it. Let’s take a beginner step, a baby step. Just download Snapchat. That’s it.

65% of video viewers watch more than three-quarters of a video3. If you’re hoping to increase engagement or to convert more of your leads, you HAVE to try something different. Even if you only send a video text to a friend with a “no-judgment” disclaimer, it’s important that you get started today.

Instagram recently launched “Instagram Business Profiles”, previously there was no separation between business and personal profiles.

Pros:
1. Analytics
Converting your Instagram account to a “Business Profile” will allow you to have access to analytics on your Instagram account. Analytics will show you
Impressions: Total number of times your post was seen
Reach: Number of unique accounts who saw your post
Website Clicks: Number of accounts that have tapped the website link on your Business Profile.
Follower Activity: Average times your followers are on Instagram on a typical day

2. Additional Contact Info
Business Profiles will have the option to add a phone number, an email address and your business’s physical address. When you add contact information, a Contact button will appear near the top of your profile. When people click that button, they’ll see options like Get Directions, Call and Email, depending on the contact information you provided.

Cons: The only downfall is I know they will start limiting businesses ability to get organic views and they’ll force all clicks and views to be paid. That’s exactly what happened over time with Facebook Business Profiles. So for now until they start enforcing that all business have to use the business profile I recommend staying with the regular profile.

Can I try it and switch back? For now it looks like they will let you switch back to a personal Instagram Account if you try it out and change your mind.

In a bold move to encourage its users to create and share more content on the platform, Instagram has announced Instagram Stories, a feature that lets users post photos and videos that vanish after 24 hours.

The feature feels much like Snapchat Stories, a Snapchat feature that was introduced in 2013 and a pivotal part of the company’s growth. And like Snapchat, the photos and videos shared in your Instagram Story are ephemeral and can’t be viewed once 24hrs has elapsed. Content shared to stories also won’t appear on your profile grid or in the main Instagram feed.

How Instagram Stories Work

Stories are rolling out globally on iOS and Android over the next few weeks. And while some users may have the feature available right now, others may have to wait a little longer to get up and running.

Instagram Stories appear in a bar at the top of your feed — and all Instagram accounts will be able to share stories, from your best friends to your favorite popular accounts. When there’s something new to see, their profile photo will have a colorful ring around it.

To view someone’s story, you simply need to tap on their profile photo, and their story will appear full-screen, showing you all of the content they’ve posted in the last 24hrs, the content will play in chronological order from oldest to newest.

Once you’re viewing a story, you can tap to go back and forward or swipe to jump to another person’s story. Unlike regular posts, there are no likes or public comments.

How to Create a Story

To create a story on Instagram, you have to tap a new stylized “+” icon at the top left-hand corner of the screen, The Verge reported. Or you can reveal the story camera by simply swiping left.

Your story follows the privacy settings of your account. If you set your account to private, your story is visible only to your followers. However, you can also easily hide your entire story from anyone you don’t want to see it, even if they follow you. When watching your own story, swipe up to check out who’s seen each photo and video. You can even choose to feature a particular part of your story by posting it on your profile.

A Couple of Ways This Stories Could Benefit Instagram

1. An Attempt to Increase sharing

When Instagram first jumped onto the scene in 2010, its defining feature was the ability to turn average- looking smartphone photos into professional feeling images using a range of clever filters and editing tools.

What made Instagram stand out, could be somewhat of a hindrance for the company now, though, as the bar for content on Instagram has grown increasing high and many of the platform’s 300 million daily users, see the Instagram feed as a precious place for only the best content.

Speaking to The Verge, Instagram co-founder, Kevin Systrom explained: “If Instagram is built around highlights, we’re filling in the space in between — and becoming more about visual expression in general. We’re capturing all the world’s moments, not just the best ones.”

How often people share on Instagram

The average number of Instagram posts per user declined between 2013 and 2015, according to a study reported in The Information. And at the same time video alone on Snapchat have hit over 10 billion views per day and saw a 25 percent increase in just three months between February and April 2016.

Union Metrics put together data on brands and Instagram(note: data came before the change to an algorithm), finding that most brands post 1 to 2 times a day on Instagram (the actual average was right in the middle, 1.5).

Stories provide a way for brands, and individuals, to post more without overwhelming people’s feeds. As the company explained on their blog:

“With Instagram Stories, you don’t have to worry about overposting. Instead, you can share as much as you want throughout the day — with as much creativity as you want.”

2. A New Focus on Messaging

We’ve seen a huge rise in messaging platforms over recent years, from Facebook-owned Messenger and Whatsapp (Facebook also owns Instagram) growing to over 1billion users a piece, and Snapchat becoming a dominant platform for 1:1 photo and video sharing, and messaging amongst teenagers.

With this update, it feels like Instagram could be about to make a move into the messaging space and become a place to not only share our best moments but discuss our every moment. If you want to comment on something you see in someone’s story, you can tap and send a private message to that person on Instagram Direct.

If Instagram can crack messaging, then the app will become about much more than our finest moments, and with an array of in-the-moment stories and conversations with those closest to us to boot, it could become a truly social network.

5 Ways Brands Could Brands Use Instagram Stories

Brands aren’t strangers to Instagram, and we could see a large number jump in and start testing stories over the next couple of weeks. Here’s our best estimate and what we may see from those first movers:

1. Behind the scenes content

If the Instagram feed has become a place for only the most polished, pre-produced photos and video, then stories could be a way to add some authenticity the content that appears in the feed. With stories, brands have a chance to take their followers on a journey and tell the story behind the posts in their feed.

Imagine seeing a brand new post from Nike featuring a well-known athlete pop up in your Instagram feed, and then being able to go behind the scenes with that athlete directly afterward or even see some exclusive footage of the shoot in their story.

This technique could be used by brands of all sizes and industries too. For example, a restaurant could post a picture to their feed on a new dish and then create a story with a well-known food blogger reviewing it. Or a real estate company could take you on a tour around a property they’ve just posted about. The possibilities here are endless.

2. A potential way to beat the algorithm

Instagram recently added a Facebook-like algorithm to filter its feed and show users the posts it determines they’ll be most interested in at the top of their feed.

We’re still unsure whether Instagram will show all stories in chronological order or if they’ll follow the algorithm, but stories could provide a way for brands to stay top-of-mind on the platform even if their content isn’t always at the top of the feed. Experimentation with stories, and being a stand-out early adopter, could help brands to get their followers paying more attention to the posts within their feeds and boost their engagement across the platform.

3. Takeovers

Takeovers have become a big thing for brands on Snapchat. If you’re not familiar with how it works, essentially, one brand will take over another’s Snapchat account for a period and share content.

With Instagram stories, brands could begin to collaborate more with other brands or influencers. For example, at Buffer we regularly feature members of our community within our Instagram feed. Once stories open up globally, we could share a photo from one of our community and then allow them to jump on our story and share a little more context about the photo or video in our feed.

4. A rise in 1:1 communication

When social media first hit the mainstream, there was a lot of buzz and excitement about being able to talk directly with your favorite celebrities and brands. Stories give brands the chance to get back to the roots of social media and engage with their followers on a 1:1 basis.

For example, we could see brands running Q&A sessions via stories with people sending questions via Instagram Direct and the brand answering them within their story. We could also see stories being used to send 1:1 video messages to followers.

5. Live, timely content

There’s a lot of excitement around live video content at the moment. And Instagram stories could give brands a way to produce live video content on the platform.

Live video is extremely engaging, and though Instagram stories won’t allow for a long, un-interrupted broadcast like Facebook Live or Periscope, it could allow brands to make their Instagram accounts the place to go for live, interactive content.

Benefit Cosmetics have used Facebook to broadcast makeup tutorials, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York used Facebook to share the opening of a new exhibit. And there’s no reason Instagram stories couldn’t be used in a similar way to these broadcasts and take users deeper into a live event as it takes place.

Over to you

This is certainly a big move for Instagram and one that could shift the platform a great deal. Snapchat has proven there’s a huge market for sharing fleeting, everyday moments of our lives and if Instagram can make stories work alongside its current offering, then this could be one of its most important updates to date.

What are your thoughts on Instagram’s Snapchat competitor? Are you excited to test out stories? How do you think we’ll see brands using the feature?Share your thoughts in the comments and I’d be excited to join the conversation.

Share your thoughts in the comments and I’d be excited to join the conversation.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been asked, “So, you get paid to go on Facebook?”

Probably quite a few of us, right? People get social media. But it seems many are still bewildered by social media marketing.

So how can you explain the value of what you do, to those who matter most to you?

To be sure, social media marketing is an incredibly new (and ever-changing) industry, unlike finance, engineering, sales, law, medicine, and more established fields. Plus most people use social media for fun, so social media’s place in business can seem suspicious.

Nevertheless, there’s a way to get your value across and explain social media marketing to stakeholders, bosses, friends, and family in a way that they’ll get. Keep reading for some tips on how to have these important conversations, and we’d love to hear any tips or stories you have to share in the comments!

What people think I do vs. What I actually do

Sometimes, when talking to different people about social media jobs, it can feel a little like the “What People Think I Do/What I Really Do” meme:

These general guidelines can help.

3 Guidelines for Talking to Anyone About Social Media

Be patient with those who might not know as much about social media as you do

Remember your audience and customize your message accordingly

Use stories to engage the other person and help them relate to you

1. Be patient

It can require some patience to remember there are plenty of people out there who don’t know Twitter recently changed its 140-character rules (and even if they did know, might not be too interested). So, if you try to explain social media marketing to someone and they’re not getting it, don’t get frustrated. Be patient with the other person, and be grateful — it’s actually pretty awesome you get to be an (unofficial) ambassador of social media.

2. Remember your audience

It’s tempting to come up with one “silver bullet” explanation and use it with every person who says, “So, tell me what you do.” But you’ll be more successful if you account for each person’s background and reasons for asking.

For example, a stranger at a party is probably making conversation, while your mentor probably wants to know how social media marketing can help her department.

3. When in doubt, use stories

As Leo has previously explained, our brains light up whenever we hear a story. Why? They’re engaging! In addition, they make complex ideas feel simple and easy to grasp.

whenever we hear a story, we want to relate it to one of our existing experiences. That’s why metaphors work so well with us. Whilst we are busy searching for a similar experience in our brains, we activate a part called insula, which helps us relate to that same experience of pain, joy, disgust or else.

This graphic from the New York Times illustrates it well:

If, during the course of explaining your social media marketing job, you notice the other person’s eyes glazing over, stop and say, “Let me explain with a story.” Then, share a situation that exemplifies the value of your job:

That time you helped a customer resolve an issue

The day you generated a ton of leads for the sales team

The campaign that brought in 100 new attendees for a company event

—

Now that we’ve got the basics down, check out how to discuss social media with these 8 types of people in your life.

8 Ways to Explain Social Media Marketing to Bosses, Clients, Family, and More

But that doesn’t mean your CEO is totally sold on or even completely understands the concept. You can help them see the value of social media marketing by drawing clear connections between the organization’s high-level goals and your own responsibilities and results.

Let’s say one of your company’s biggest priorities right now is generating better leads. You could tell your CEO, “After looking at the data, my team realized our most qualified prospects were coming from LinkedIn. So, we started focusing our energy on LinkedIn and dialed it back on Twitter and Facebook—and now, the number of MQLs we’re shooting over to sales has gone up by 30%.”

Of course, you’ll want to adjust your approach depending on how fluent your CEO is in social media. Some executives will be crystal-clear on, say, the differences between Meerkat, Periscope, and Snapchat, while others might say, “Meer-what?”

If your CEO is closer to the second, make sure that you provide simple, quick explanations for every new concept you introduce. To give you an idea, you might say, “We’ve been getting 20% more event attendees ever since we started filming ‘behind-the-scenes’ videos with Periscope, a tool for live broadcasting.”

Together, we’ll come up with a strategy for your online presence that aligns with the company’s brand, vision, and values. With that locked down, we can create content for social media, our blog, third-party blogs, and more. By establishing you as credible and trustworthy—not to mention a valuable source of information— we’ll support the business goals and online reputation of the company.

3. Your Coworker

Explain what you do in context with what they do

New coworkers will always ask, “Oh, what team are you on?” However, even when you’re talking to people who have known you for years, it’s helpful to have a job description you can whip out during meetings and random conversations.

The key? Customize your explanation to the person’s own role.

To give you an idea, let’s say you’re talking to someone on their first day.

You: Welcome to the coolest company ever! What team are you joining?

Them: Thank you! I’m a support engineer. What do you do?

You: Oh, awesome. I run our blog—so actually, I spend a lot of time with the support team, since your interactions tell me so much about how our users think and what type of content they’ll like.

Now, here’s how that interaction might play out if they were, say, in HR.

Them: I’m a PeopleOps associate. What about you?

You: Nice! I’m a social media coordinator, so I figure out what to post to our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts. In fact, our customers love seeing candid pictures from our internal events—hackathons, company celebrations, speaker lunches, etc.—so I’m sure we’ll get a chance to work together as you plan out the lineup.

Describing how your role fits into the other person’s role makes it easier for for them to relate to (and later remember). Plus, it’s a nice way to lay the groundwork for future collaboration.

Teams like Typeform make it a bit smoother to see where new hires fit within the structure of the organization. Their Trello-based org chart helps you see who works where and on what — making the social media marketer’s explaining a bit easier.

4. A Potential Contact (Who’s Not in Marketing)

Ask them about their favorite brands — and use that info to frame your answer

It’s always challenging to explain your job when you’re networking: You want to be interesting and memorable, yet accurate. And when the person you’re talking to is from a different industry, it’s even more challenging — now you also have to describe your role in a way they’ll appreciate.

The best solution I’ve found? Ask about their favorite brand, then use that brand as your example.

Here’s how that might play out:

Them: I manage HR for Capstone. What do you do?

You: Oh, cool! I’ve heard great things about you guys. And I work in social media marketing—actually, it might be easier with an example. What’s a company you like?

Them: Hmm. I love Shake Shack.

You: Ahh, me too. Well, if I worked for Shake Shack, I’d be the one posting those drool-worthy pictures to Instagram, writing food-themed posts for our blog, working with Marketing to make sure our latest restaurant openings will be covered on social… And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

5. A Potential Contact (Who Is in Marketing)

Solicit their advice on a social media marketing challenge

Let’s face it, answering the “what do you do” question is much easier when it’s coming from a fellow marketer. You can just say, “I’m a community manager,” or “I manage our digital media efforts,” without giving any follow-up details or definitions.

However, while there’s nothing wrong with simply providing your job title, you’ll be missing an awesome opportunity. Surface-level answers are huge road-blocks in the conversation when you’re talking to someone new—the more in-depth or specific you go, the more you and the other person will have to discuss.

With that in mind, consider asking for advice on a challenge you’re currently facing.

You: I’m a social media coordinator for Owl Insights. Actually—I’d love to get your expertise on an issue we’re currently struggling with.

Them: Oh, sure!

You: So, I’m in charge of our Instagram page, and I’m really struggling to come up content ideas that our audience will be interested in. I’ve been posting “behind-the-scenes” pictures, but they’re not driving much engagement.

Them: Well, I love how Granular—who’s also B2B—has started a UCG campaign…

6. A Hiring Manager

Share your specific social media results. Mention data plus strategy.

In order to get a job, you need to convince the hiring manager of one major thing: You will make their organization more successful. Everything else — from your previous experience and education to your skill-set and certifications — only matters because it indicates whether or not you can do a good job in this role.

So when you’re talking to an interviewer, focus on your results.

And get specific.

For instance, “I grew our Medium followers by 200% in three months,” is only meaningful if you add, “… by bringing in some of the most well-known writers in our space to guest-post, publishing one high-quality piece per week rather than three average ones, and incorporating custom graphics.”

Sharing more details is even better. To give you an idea, you could add:

“I decided to reduce how often we posted per week after running a short experiment. I compared our engagement for a week with three medium-researched, 700-word posts to a week with one highly-researched, 3,000-word post. We gained twice as many followers the second week and got four times as many comments and likes—in part because the longer piece was recommended by several key influencers.”

This level of detail shows you’re analytical and thoughtful. It also tells the interviewer that you didn’t get those results through luck.

7. Your Friends

Figure out the last time they interacted with a social media manager (whether they knew it or not)

Although they might not realize it, your friends probably interact with social media marketers on an hourly basis. You can demonstrate the value of your work by finding some of those interactions.

For example, you could ask a friend to show you the last 10 photos he liked on Instagram. There’s a strong chance at least one will belong to a business or brand.

Once you spot one, explain, “This company’s social media team posted this picture to increase engagement with users just like you. They know seeing this picture makes you more loyal and engaged.”

Next, connect the dots by saying, “I use a similar approach at my job. My company posts [X type of content] on [platform 1] to build relationship with [these types of customers]. We also post [Y type of content] on [platform 2] to build relationships with [different/related types of customers].

Nate Hill, a web and social media strategist for the University of Michigan’s career center, advises ending with:

I look for new ways to get people to interact, consume, or share the content we’re putting out for them.

8. Strangers

Have a story ready

From random people in the grocery store to friendly strangers on the street, you never know when you’ll meet a total stranger who will ask what you do. In these cases, you don’t have the background knowledge necessary to tailor your explanation. That’s why it’s extremely handy to have a universally relatable example up your sleeve.

Florina Gobel, who handles social media strategy for the non-profit New Organ, uses this one:

“I’m like a chef. I cook up stories. I want people to like my food, talk about my food, and get their friends to come over and recommend it to their friends. So I plan the menus carefully: what story will be served, how, and when. I design strategic menus of stories. Bite-sized appetizer stories, individual courses, dessert, etc to be served at the right times, the right places. I analyze customers’ response to inform future menu decisions. And I also respond directly to both positive and negative feedback. A job well done means building a thriving, loyal community driven to take actions that support the restaurant’s business goals and growth.”

9. Your Grandparents

Make your role feel relatable

The number of older people on social media has tripled since 2010, with roughly one in three people over 65 using at least one platform.

That’s good news when you’re trying to explain your job in social media to your grandparents. But even if they’re familiar with the ins and outs of Facebook, you might still need to outline how your activity (on all the channels) contributes to your company’s success.

Start by providing an illustration of marketing they’ll be familiar with.

For instance, you might say:

“You know how you’ll be flipping through a magazine, and you’ll see an ad for a new car model? And then maybe you turn on the TV, and you see an ad for that car again. Next thing you know, you’re listening to the radio, and you hear a broadcast for that same car. If you’re going to buy a new car in the near future, that brand—if not that exact model—will be on your mind.”

Now link your example to social media, like so:

“You’ve probably noticed how much time people spend online. Well, I put information about my company and our products online, where potential customers can find it. I also try to keep them satisfied after they’re….”

Over to you

Do you have any awesome ways of describing your job to the people in your life?

I’d love to hear your stories of what worked—and what hasn’t worked—in the comments!

If you could travel back in time to when Facebook or Instagram first started grabbing mainstream attention, knowing what you do now about the opportunity they hold for brands, you’d jump aboard, right?

Well, that opportunity is now on Snapchat.

Snapchat, a platform built on short ephemeral messages, seems destined to become a long-lasting social media powerhouse.

This future seems all the more realistic with the addition of Snapchat Memories — a way to share photos and videos captured outside of Snapchat to your Story. I’ve done some thinking about what this new addition means to Snapchat content and the future of the social network. My conclusion: All good things!

Keep reading to see what Memories is all about and how Snapchat is evolving into a must-have social media channel.

My teammate Brian recently shared his thoughts about Snapchat Memories in this video commentary. Would love to have you take a look!

What Are Snapchat Memories? Here’s an Overview

With Snapchat Memories, you can now, for the first time, share photos and videos captured outside of Snapchat to your Story.

That’s one of the key features of Memories – an update that fundamentally shifts Snapchat, taking the platform that has become famous for its disappearing content and moving it in a new direction.

Alongside the ability to share content from outside the app, Memories also enables users to save Snaps to a smart, searchable camera roll and enables re-sharing (and embellishing) of previously sent snaps.

I’d love to show you more about how each of these new Memories features work.

1. Share any photo or video — from within the app or from anywhere else

Memories enable Snapchat users to tell bigger stories that incorporate more than just in-the-moment photos and video. Instead of purely spontaneous content, Snapchat can now be used to share much more thoughtfully — similar to the approach you’d take with platforms like Instagram and Facebook, where the content you post doesn’t disappear.

With the flexibility to share any photo or video you want through Snapchat — not just those you took within the app — the company has opened up a whole new way to create content.

Users can access Memories by swiping up from the camera section of the app.

Saved photos and videos that are uploaded as Stories or Snaps have a timestamp to show when they were originally taken.

2. Save Snaps to a searchable camera roll

You can use Memories to create new Stories from Snaps you’ve taken, or even combine different Stories into a longer narrative. It’s fun to celebrate an anniversary or birthday by finding a few old Snaps and stringing them together into a new Story.

All saved photo and video Snaps plus your Stories appear in the main Memories tab, where you can also import all of your previously saved Snaps. From the Memories tab (which serves as an in-app camera roll), it’s super easy to find the Snap or Story you’re looking for in just a few seconds by typing keywords like “dog” or “Hawaii.”

That’s the ins and outs of Snapchat Memories covered. Now, what does this mean? And how will it affect the way brands create content on Snapchat?

On the future of Snapchat: How Memories will affect Snapchat’s content

1. Memories raise the bar for quality Snaps

Political news site, The Hill, uses Snapchat to live-snap key political events and the larger world of politics and life in DC. They also have some recurring Snapchat series’. One, called Capitol Cribs, for instance, offers Snapchat tours of lawmaker offices.

Memories will make producing this type of content easier in the sense that it doesn’t have to all be done in real time, but harder in that I think it will raise the bar for repackaged content. Now that we have a longer lead time on creating these evergreen-type stories, the quality of what we put out on our channel should improve.

Lifting the limit on content creation from what can only be created within the app has a huge upside when it comes to creating engaging stories for Snapchat. Allowing people to upload pre-existing content also opens up the door for .

2. Memories make a longer shelf life for content

These days, content on social media has a very low shelf life.

None more so than Snapchat, where content disappears after 24 hours.

With the new features in Snapchat Memories (saving, reusing), this will make it easier for brands to justify budgets and invest in high-end creative for their Stories. Any photos or videos created for Snapchat can now be re-used, and content from other networks can also be re-published on the platform.

3. Memories may help Snapchat expand to a wider audience

In order to continue its impressive growth, it’s increasingly important for Snapchat to attract a broader (and older) audience. Currently, Snapchat dominates attention for 18 to 34-year-olds. Forty-one percent of all 18 to 34 year-olds in the United States use the app on any given day.

This comes as no surprise, as Snapchat has put a lot of focus on becoming a more mainstream product and moving away from the stigma that it’s only for teenagers.

In 2015, Snapchat Discover made the network a media destination by providing publishers with a mobile-first way to share editorial content. And now, Memories is another strong move to help Snapchat become a complete distribution channel for individuals and brands alike.

Snapchat has huge, multi-billion dollar revenue potential, and as reported by TechCrunch, the company is looking to be making and as much as $1 billion in revenue during 2017.

Hitting this revenue target will rely greatly on Snapchat’s ability to spread its wings and continue to grow beyond its early adopters and increase its market share for the 35+ age range (and into the early majority). Much like when Facebook expanded from college students to parents (and now grandparents), Snapchat’s future growth and revenues could rely on its ability to pivot and engage the older generation and mass market.

4. Memories can feed the evolution of Snapchat’s ad product

While Snapchat has reportedly achieved 150 million global daily active users (overtaking Twitter), the company is still a ways off Facebook’s 1 billion-plus user base.

And ads only work if there are users to engage with them.

With Memories, Snapchat now has a legitimate claim to be the go-to camera app for capturing and saving moments. Users in the early and late majority may also appreciate the ability to take a photo and video and worry about sharing later.

This shift could be seen as more user-friendly and easier to understand for the less digitally-native population and should help the company to build its user base, and in turn, boost its revenues.

The fact that Snapchat can now store photos and videos as Memories could also give it more insight into its user interests than before and more data should help Snapchat to improve its ad-targeting. Something that Facebook mastered on its way to becoming a dominant mobile advertising network.

Just last month (June 2016), Snapchat announced an advertising API – its biggest move yet towards becoming a pay-to-play network for large brands. The API will allow selected partners to sell Snapchat’s video ad inventory via an automated, auction-based system.

With the API roll-out and launch of Memories, Snapchat is getting serious about growth and revenue. And I don’t think it’ll be too long before we see a Facebook-style ‘ads-for-all’ platform, enabling brands of all sizes to capitalize on Snapchat’s highly-engaged audience.

Only time will tell how Snapchat’s ad product will evolve, but one thing’s for sure when it comes to revenue, Snapchat is just getting started…

Why now is the time to go all-in on Snapchat

At Buffer, we believe there are two key periods of opportunity for brands on social platforms:

Right now, Snapchat is growing towards the mainstream and there’s still a ton of opportunity to stand out and build an audience organically. Meaning you don’t need ads or paid distribution to grab attention.

Think of it as Instagram in 2014-2015 or Facebook in 2009-2010.

Great content works on Snapchat, and you don’t need a huge budget.

In a year or so, things may be different. Snapchat is rumored to be working on a Facebook-like algorithm that would curate Stories and show users content it feels they’ll enjoy most at the top of their feed, rather than displaying each Story in chronological orders as the app does now. This, coupled with more brands and individuals vying for attention on the platform could make it harder to break through and get people to open your Snaps.

I’m confident when I say Snapchat will be around for the long haul. The ephemeral messaging app loved by teenagers could have been a short-lived fad, but what Snapchat is building has far, far more longevity and opportunity for brands of all sizes.

Your thoughts

I’d love to hear your thoughts on Snapchat Memories and the future of the platform.

How do you see Memories affecting your use of Snapchat? And how do you feel ads will affect the platform?

That being said, spreadsheets are not always easy. Finding or building the right ones and figuring out how best to use them can be time-consuming tasks. We’d love to help.

To give you a hand with managing spreadsheets in Excel and Google Sheets (and hopefully save a great deal of time), we’ve pulled together a list of essential spreadsheets, templates, formulas, and shortcuts that are handy for every marketer to have in their locker.

Let’s jump in…

10 Ready-made Marketing Spreadsheets to Boost Your Productivity

For many of the free spreadsheets linked below, you can download as an .xls file to use and customize in Excel or Google Docs. Google Doc users can also go to “File > Make a Copy …” to add the spreadsheet to their account, then edit.

2. Waterfall chart

The waterfall spreadsheet template is extremely versatile for keeping pace with your goals. We use it to track many of our OKRs here at Buffer. (Thanks to the HubSpot team for turning us onto waterfalls.)

Here’s an example of it in use to keep tabs on the number of comments we received per post throughout Q2:

This spreadsheet can be used to track your progress on most any metric. Here are a few ideas to get you going:

Follower growth on social media

Newsletter subscribers

Traffic growth

Clicks from your social accounts

3. Blog post traffic tracker

This is one of my favorite spreadsheets we use at Buffer and I’m excited to share it with you. The blog post traffic spreadsheet enables us to keep an eye on which pieces of content are hitting our traffic goals and it’s also really great to keep an eye on what topics are performing best, too.

4. Social media marketing baselines

Know right away which social media posts are on track and which are taking off

7. Google Analytics heatmap

The folks at Seer Interactive set about to recreate a Google Analytics mobile dashboard look from a desktop spreadsheet. The results are pretty nifty: You can see the times when your site receives its most organic traffic, which might help you plan when to publish new posts or promote content.

8. Social media calendar

We were grateful to partner with HubSpot in creating the above calendar template. One of our favorite features: It includes a sheet to store your best evergreen content and updates so that you can quickly grab something to share in a pinch.

9. Social media metrics dashboard

Visualize (and share) all your social media marketing growth from one place

This is the spreadsheet we use at Buffer to track the performance of our social media marketing. It allows us to chart week-over-week growth and month-over-month growth, with sheets for the snapshot overview and each month’s performance.

10. Quotes to share

Some of our most highly engaged social media content is quotes. And when we’re looking for some fresh inspiration, we often turn to this spreadsheet. (Likewise, when we find some quotable inspiration, we add it to the sheet.)

These quotes work great as images also. You can build an image quote in 30 seconds or less using Pablo or other image-creation tools.

5 incredibly handy spreadsheet formulas

1. Tidy up spacing

Have you ever started working on a spreadsheet with some odd spacing going on? A few rogue spaces throughout a sheet can make it difficult to work with the data. Thankfully, there’s a nice, simple formula to help you remove unwanted spaces.

The Trim function works across both Google Sheets and Excel. To use it, simply type the following formula into the Formula Bar:

=TRIM("Your Text Here")

Here’s an example, to remove the unwanted spaces before a name in our spreadsheet. For this, we used the formula: TRIM(“Kevan Lee”)

2. Spilt

The following formula can help you to split values within your Google Sheets spreadsheet based on any given character (or delimiter) within the cell. In the below example we used the character ” ” (space) to split first names and surnames from the values listed in Column A.

The formula you need to do this is:

=split(string, delimiter)

And in the above example, we used “A2″ as the string and ” ” (space) as the delimiter, making our formula:

3. Percentage difference between two numbers

Back at the start of Q2 2016, we set a goal to boost the traffic to our new posts by 30% in the first 30 days after publishing. To measure this, I created a spreadsheet, and in one column had the target traffic for each post with the actual traffic in another and the percantage difference between the two figures displayed in a third column. This formula helped to me see whether we hit the goal on not at a glance, and how far over or under we were.

Here’s a snippet of the spreadsheet (you can see the % difference in the green / red figures in the furthest right column):

To work out the percetage difference you need to use the following formula:=(-1) * (Cell 1-Cell 2)/Cell 2

For example, if we have a target of 3,315 page views and achieve 4,147 page views, this forumlua will tell you that you were 25.10% over your target:

Note: Ensure the cells you’re using this formula for are formatted as percentages to ensure this one works.

4. Autosum

Autosum can be a really neat time saver in Excel. To use it, simply select an empty cell to the right or below the cells you want to sum, and type Alt + = (or Command + Shift + T on Mac). Excel will then estimate the range of cells you’re trying to combine and in one step give you the total.

Note: If Excel’s estimation is a little off, you can edit the range of cells include in the sum within the formula bar.

In Google Sheets, Autosum works a little differently. First, you need to select the range of cells you wish to add up, then click the Functions button and select the SUM option. Google Sheets will then automatically add the sum of your selected cells directly in the cell below (or to the right if you’re combining data from rows).

Here’s that workflow in action:

5. Add up the sum of cells matching certain criteria

If you wanted to discover the page views on your blog generated by posts written a certain author or count only data from users in a specifc cohort, it could take a while to figure these out manually. This is where the SUMIF function comes into play.

SUMIF allows you to add up cells that meet a certain criteria. Here’s how a SUMIF works:

=SUMIF (range, criteria, [sum_range])

=SUMIF: tells the formula it’ll be summing only cells that match the specified critera

Range: the range of cells you’re going to add up

Criteria: the criteria used to determine which cells to add

Sum Range: The cells to add together

Here’s an example showing how we can breakdown page views generated by post type on the Buffer Social blog using a SUMIF:

In order to calculate the number of page views ‘News’ posts generated we used the formula:=SUMIF(B2:B7,"*news*",D2:D7)

This formula sums the amounts in column D (range) when a value in column B (sum range) contains “News” (critera).

Bonus: 9 Time-Saving Shortcuts and Tips Used by Spreadsheet Masters

1. Add borders to cells

When I work with spreadsheets, I love to use borders to help me break up the data and make a sheet easier to understand. Both Excel and Google Sheets have a button to add borders, but they also have some super-handy shortcuts:

Google Sheets:

Apply top border: PC: Alt + Shift + 1 | Mac: Option + Shift + 1

Apply right border: PC: Alt + Shift + 2 | Mac: Option + Shift + 2

Apply bottom border: PC: Alt + Shift + 3 | Mac: Option + Shift + 3

Apply left border: PC: Alt + Shift + 4 | Mac: Option + Shift + 4

Remove borders: PC: Alt + Shift + 6 | Mac: Option + Shift + 6

Apply outer border: PC: Alt + Shift + 7 | Mac: Option + Shift + 7

Excel:

PC and Mac (substitute Alt for the Option key on Mac):

2. Format numbers as currency

If you have same data you’d like to quickly turn into currency, there’s a super quick solution to help you out. This shortcut can be particularly useful when you’re working with budgets, revenues or even salaries.

To use this trick, simply highlight the cells you wish to update and press Control + Shift + 4. Thankfully, this shortcut is universal across Excel, Google Sheets, Mac and PC.

3. Format as a percentage

Much like formatting numbers as currency you can also format numbers as a percentage using a neat shortcut. To do this, simply select the cells you’d like to show as percentages and press Control + Shift + 5.

4. Copy formatting

Formatting spreadsheets to your liking can take quite some time. To help speed this process up, you can use the Paint Format button to copy and paste formatting from one bunch or cells to another.

To do this, highlight the formatting you’d like to copy, then click on the paint brush icon (on both Excel and Google Sheets) and then select the area you’d like to apply the formatting to and click the paint brush again. Your styling will now be applied to those cells.

5. Start a new line in the same cell

Adding multiple lines of text within the same cell is often a puzzle for spreadsheet users. I can’t even recall how many times I experimented and tried to figure this out before someone was gracious enough to teach me this amazingly simple keyboard command.

Here’s the answer, to add a new line of text in the same cell holding Alt + Enter on PC or Control + Option + Return on Mac, will add a new line inside a cell on both Google Sheets and Excel.

6. Insert date and time

Almost every spreadsheet will have a column for the date or time and the following shortcuts work across Excel, Google Sheets, Mac and PC:

To add the date, use Control + ;

To enter the current time, use Control + Shift +

7. Fill down / Fill right

These shortcuts allow you to quickly copy data from the cell above or the cell to the left, without having to copy and paste. In Excel, to copy a value from the cell above, use Control + D. To copy data from the cell to the left, use Control + R.

Google Sheets works a little differently here, but you can still use a shortcut to fill cells to the right and below. To do this on Google Sheets:

Highlight the cells you’d like to fill with the top or furthest left cell being the one you’d like to copy

Press Command + D

8. Show formulas

Occasionally, it can be useful to see all the formulas within your sheet, and what’s even better is being able to do this without having to manually click on each cell to see the formula behind the data. By holding Control + ‘ (on both Mac and PC and Google Sheets and Excel), you can display all formulas within your spreadsheet at once.

This shortcut is particularly useful to help ensure you’re using consistent formulas throughout your sheet.

9. Insert rows and columns

To insert a row above or column into a spreadsheet, you first need to select an entire row or column. The, on Excel, use Control + Shift and +(on Mac: Control + I) to insert a row or column (columns will be added to the right of the selected column).

Humans crave variety. With a buffet ticket, you can try the dumplings, the salad, the spare ribs, brussels sprouts, and the pasta—and that variety makes you feel good.

This principle of variety definitely applies to social media content: It’s easier to surprise and delight your followers when you’re not always serving up the same things. By continually introducing new content types into your social media lineup, you’ll keep your audience members on their toes and engaged.

If you’re eager to explore, but not sure where to start, check out this list of seven awesome types of social media content you can be creating right now.

1. Custom GIFs

Create your own animated GIFs to boost engagement and tell a story

A great GIF is worth a thousand words. Along with driving massive engagement, GIFs help you explain difficult ideas, add some visual variety to your feed, and have some fun with your audience.

If you need inspiration, check out NASA’s Twitter. NASA’s content is already visually compelling; after all, it doesn’t get more beautiful than the solar system. However, the agency takes things to the next level by animating things like shuttle take-offs, planets in rotation, and shots from space.

NASA also makes GIFs for its recurring social features. Its monthly “What’s Up” post, which showcases the coolest things happening in the night sky, gets a custom GIF for Twitter promotion. You can check out the June version below.

InVision, a wireframing and prototyping tool, has an admirable GIF strategy as well. For every 10 blog posts the company shares on social media, one or two will have accompanying GIFs that illustrate a concept from the post. Not only are the snippets semi-mesmerizing, but they allow InVision’s followers to get value without having to click on the link.

To take things to the next level …

Make cinemagraphs.

A cinemagraph has the same file format as a GIF; however, rather than a series of images playing in a loop, it’s a static image with movement in one part of the frame. Cinemagraphs are, as designer Jason Winter puts it, “scroll-stoppers.”

Use captions, filters, stickers to build stories that stand out

Nonetheless, many companies still aren’t biting—err, snapping. According to research firm L2, only 40% of B2C businesses have accounts, compared to 93% for Instagram. Even fewer B2B companies are on Snapchat.

It’s normal to feel a little intimidated by the app’s unfiltered format, yet that authenticity and spontaneity actually make Snapchat a prime marketing opportunity. You can invite your audience into your world and even get a peek into theirs.

To see how a brand (and a B2B one, no less) can fully optimize this platform, follow DocuSign (@docusigninc). Every week, the company posts a literal story, usually riffing on a well-known children’s book or movie. A couple weeks ago, for example, Mary Poppins discovered the magic of electronic signatures. The week after that, the Lorax learned how DocuSign can save trees.

The stories are a blend of drawings, emojis, and captions. Not only are they creative, but they feel totally unlike any other promotional materials out there.

Shopify (@shopify) uses all sorts of creative Snapchat features to make their stories stand out. The snap below uses captions, filters, and stickers in a unique and eye-catching way.

The Shopify team was generous to write about some of their best Snapchat tips. Their list includes:

Creating title cards for longer Snapchat stories

Doing Snapchat takeovers with celebrities or partners

Using shortened URLs for links

Adding music over your snaps

Anthropologie (@anthropologie) is a strong example of a company doing Snapchat well in the B2C sphere. The brand mostly uses Snapchat to provide behind-the-scenes access to its photoshoots, future products, and employee life. Plus, Snapchat just launched shoppable snaps—now it’s even easier for consumers to buy the products they see featured.

To take things to the next level …

Whenever I’m in a new place, I love taking Snapchat photos and adding a custom geo-filter so people can see where I am.

And I’m definitely not the only user who loves using these location-based overlays. As Brian shares in his handy guide to on-demand geo-filters, you can generate tens of thousands of impressions for under $50.

Starbucks definitely uses UGC to rack up loyalty points with its followers. Roughly one-third of its Instagram photos are regrams from other accounts, which lets Starbucks show how different people are enjoying its drinks around the world.

Some of the corporation’s most-favorited posts come from users. Even better, people are motivated to upload shots of their orders to Instagram, in the hopes they’ll be shared.

Using the same strategy, the Buffer Instagram account shares user-generated content once or twice every week, averaging nearly 200 likes and comments on each photo (at the upper-end of the benchmark for Buffer Instagram engagement).

And getting started was quite smooth: Reach out to community members 1:1 whenever you spot a great image, mention the users when you share the post, repeat. You may even notice users sending content your way all on their own!

Some weeks, the UGC content can be 50 percent of what’s posted to Buffer Instagram:

To take things to the next level …

Run social media contests.

Waiting for your users to spontaneously upload photos is fine—but with a contest, you can capture a ton of content in a short time frame. Even better, contests are fun for everyone involved: the participants, your audience, and of course, the winner.

National Geographic and MySwitzerland.com, for example, partnered on a fantastic UGC contest to promote travel to Switzerland. To enter, people posted their favorite shots of the country to Instagram with the hashtag #LoveSwitzerlandContest. The winner received a 10-day National Geographic Expedition to Switzerland.

The contest was a big success, generating almost 9,400 posts. Plus, 70% of the visitors to the contest hub page clicked the CTA for more trips.

4. Infographics

Pictures + text = 25% better comprehension

If you count early cave paintings as infographics, then humans have been making and consuming this type of content for the past 32,000 years. And for good reason: adding pictures to text makes your message 25% more comprehensible, not to mention far more engaging and persuasive.

There’s an infographic—or five—for every topic you can think of. But the ones that get the most mileage tie back to their brand’s product or space. Real estate app Movoto, for example, created this infographic pairing famous cities with their font personalities.

To take things to the next level …

Animated infographics (a.k.a. gifographics) have been around for a couple years, but they’re still relatively rare—which means they’re a fantastic option if you want your content to stand out.

Neil Patel was one of the early adopters of gifographics. His primer on Google proves the attention-grabbing power of animation.

5. Concept Visualizations

Self-explanatory visuals, charts, and graphs spread far

Infographics are one of the most powerful tools in a marketer’s kit. But designing a great one is hard work; plus, you need enough data to tell a story.

Here’s where concept visualizations come in. Because visualizations typically illustrate a single idea—rather than multiple stats and facts—they’re much smaller and more digestible than infographics. And they’re also quicker to create, meaning you could potentially pump one or two out for every blog post.

As you can see, the team took an interesting concept from one of their blog posts and turned it into a simple graph. Then, they used it to promote the post.

Having an embedded graphic that’s useful on its own makes Wistia’s tweet highly shareable. In addition, it really drives home why time-on-site is an important metric.

Along similar lines, data visualization app Visme produced the chart below to go along with a job search article.

This chart is both interesting and easy to read. Note that Visme got the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics—even if your company doesn’t have unique data, you can always visualize information from another source (just remember to give them credit!).

And when it comes to creating these visualizations yourself, one of the fastest ways is with a simple Google Sheets chart. You can enter the data into a spreadsheet, build whatever style chart feels best, and take a quick screenshot of the result:

To take things to the next level …

Use your own data.

While this move can stretch out the creation process a bit, it gives you the opportunity to position yourself as a thought leader.

The final option? Conduct your own research. This New York Times visualization is an excellent example: it uses simple photography and copy to show the impact each piece of produce has on California’s drought crisis.

6. Shareable Quotes

Easy to curate and create; just as much (or more) engagement

There’s something about a great quote that sticks in your mind for days, weeks, months, or even years. As marketers, we have the opportunity to share the best ones with our audience—and simultaneously inspire them and boost our brand.

Teachable, a platform for creating online courses, has made quotes a cornerstone of its social media strategy.

When you look at its six most recent Instagram posts, half are quotes. These visuals get just as much (and often more) engagement than the traditional images.

General Assembly has its own quote strategy. Like Teachable, GA uses a specific hashtag for its quote visuals. It also uses a consistent format and style to make sure its followers link the inspiration to the source.

If you don’t want to design your own template, take advantage of Buffer’s Pablo image creator. You can pick out the perfect background photo and add your text in a minute or less; plus, you can download different sizes for the various networks.

To take things to the next level …

Combine concept visualizations and quotes. Once you’ve started making both separately, it’s only a short step to putting them together.

This example from Visual.ly demonstrates how cool the results can be. The quotes and the pie charts play off of each other quite nicely, each providing separate but related information. The juxtaposition of text and charts is also well-done.

7. Facebook Live

Live videos are watched 3x longer and shown more in News Feed

Facebook’s live video streaming service is still in its infancy, but it’s already one of the top ways to form real connections with your audience. Live is informal—and by definition, unscripted—which means viewers feel like they’re getting a more intimate experience. You can see the effect on engagement: according to Facebook, people spend 3x longer on real-time video.

Benefit Cosmetics is taking full advantage of this new medium. Every Thursday, the brand live-streams an episode of “Tipsy Tricks with Benefit!” The hosts sip on wine, exchange playful banter, and answer beauty questions from their audience. The last installment received 29,000 views, 655 reactions, and 100-plus comments.

To take things to the next level …

Create multi-channel live campaigns.

Facebook Live is great, but it’s not the only live-streaming platform in town—to maximize your live content, distribute it across multiple apps.

For instance, Land Rover and The Brooks Brothers have joined forces on #LiveTestDrive, a Periscope and Facebook Live campaign. Every Friday, the team puts the car through its paces in on-road and off-road environments. Viewers get an up-close-and-personal look at how the Land Rover drives; plus, they can participate in live Q&As by using the hashtag #LiveTestDrive.

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